Resilience – the ability to weather the storms, to bounce back after a disruption, adapt quickly to change.
In the face of increasing turbulence, from weather events to global geopolitics, discussion of resilience is coming loudly to the fore here in Lincolnshire.
I’ll give you a few examples:
Farm resilience
This year’s Lincolnshire Farming Conference was on the theme of resilience.
How can individual farms survive the current landscape of policy uncertainty, volatile markets and tight margins, water-logged soils and withdrawal of abstraction licenses?
Advice was varied and sometimes dizzying, from understanding wider trends, to being less of a farmer and more of a business; focusing on best practice, creating opportunities for the next generation, seizing opportunities in carbon farming and nature based solutions, not to mention the 57 recommendations to the government in Minette Batters’ Farming Profitability Review.
Community resilience
Meanwhile, Emergency Planning has appointed a Community Resilience Officer, the brilliant Kimberley Pickett, who is supporting parish-level groups to develop emergency plans for their communities, and running a programme of roadshows across the county on Flooding Resilience & Mental Wellbeing.
Sometimes it can be counter intuitive – individuals and communities who you might assume are more vulnerable can also be experienced with dealing with the unexpected, and adept at being remarkably well prepared.
Everyone can play a part, is the message.
Household resilience
Over the next three years, local authorities will be making the most appropriate use on a local level of the government’s new Crisis and Resilience fund.
The fund is designed to support low income families cope with shocks, moving from constant fire-fighting to building a more secure, longer term resilience on a household level.
Civil Food Resilience
In classic food partnership style, this year’s Lincolnshire Food Summit takes a systems perspective, noticing how food production, dietary health, community connection and access to food are deeply interconnected.
It is a place-based response to Tim Lang’s important Just in Case report.
Food system resilience may be strained by fragile supply chains, deepening inequalities, and worsening diets, but food is also nourishment on so many levels: good food has the power to improve the health and strength of our bodies and minds, economies and communities.
Building food resilience takes place in our shared food spaces, whether social dining, school kitchens, shops, markets, or allotments – places of connection and community.
That work starts now.
Join us at the Lincolnshire Food Summit on 14th May at Wragby Town Hall. Bookings and details: lincolnshirefoodpartnership.org/food-summit-2026
Thank you to the Lincoln Independent for publishing this in their March 2026 print edition
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